


Sea of Stars (they keep me from you)

by sammyspreadyourwings



Series: 2019 DL Stocking Stuffers [6]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Being Lost, Depression, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Loneliness, Lost in space - Freeform, M/M, Separations, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyspreadyourwings/pseuds/sammyspreadyourwings
Summary: When Brian closes his eyes, he hears softly in the silence of space, "Welcome home."
Relationships: Brian May/Roger Taylor
Series: 2019 DL Stocking Stuffers [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583506
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	Sea of Stars (they keep me from you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epherians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epherians/gifts).



Space is hauntingly beautiful. Celestial bodies making sounds and songs that not a soul would hear in the vacuum. Knowing that each planet is a source of indescribable colors and patterns but being unable to see it with the naked eye because it is so dark. Entirely dark.

Brian wouldn’t be able to see if not for the light attached to his suit. The battery is nearly dim and gives off a light no brighter than that of a candle.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that the light is a candle which carries a hint of sea breeze, one of Freddie’s favorite scents. Brian smiles faintly. Freddie had said that he loves that scent because of the night they had spent on Brighton beach, where Brian had talked himself hoarse over the stars.

When he opens his eyes, he remains in the shelter that had been constructed long before humans reached this comet. The walls are the smooth white-gray, stone quarried from the comet itself. Long ago someone had thought to tame this rock. Make a life – a home on it. Now old childish drawings line the lower parts of the wall and what had once been a dining table has been converted into a communication array.

He closes his eyes, pretending that he hears the computer starting up with a video message. It has been months, perhaps a year, since he last received their transmission. Nothing comes from it and he opens his eyes.

The longing is deep in his bones. As a child, he wanted nothing more than to see the stars he loved up close. He has that now, in spades. Passing by celestial bodies he’ll never live to see again. Brightly lit by blue stars. White stars. He loves white stars the most, it’s the greatest light he gets on this comet.

That’s a lie. The stars he loves the most are the medium yellows. He can remember what it felt like to lay in the grass, the blades tickling his cheeks as his own personal sun smiles down at him.

_Come on, Bri! We’re on vacation. Let’s do things._

His smile grows wider. Roger. His love. Deepest and pure. It fades when he remembers the last time that he had felt Roger’s fingertips on his cheeks was two years ago. Maybe even three. If it had been four Brian doesn’t know what he would do with himself.

He doesn’t feel four years older. The only passing of time is the passing of planets and stars. Days and nights and seasons don’t matter.

As he learned a lot of things don’t matter. Mathematical formulas had said the chances of the two asteroids colliding was less than a 1% chance. That it would only be a year-long mission. That recording the near miss would be a data set of the highest quality.

Truthfully, he doesn’t know that he is passing the celestial bodies he has. Perhaps he has imagined the coating of the white dwarf on this comet and he hasn’t seen the hint of a planet shadowed in the darkness.

It wouldn’t make sense considering the map he has studied and knows like the back of his hand.

Harder thoughts come to him. That maybe he has gone through a wormhole. That thousands of years have already passed, and he has fallen out on some point in the rotation of the galaxy.

Brian wishes he had heard John laugh once more. John so easily laughed and smiled, but it was hard to make it truly genuine. The type of joy that is wrapped in contentment. So clearly can he picture that gap-toothed smile.

When he falls asleep, he dreams of late-night music sessions. John’s heartbeat and Roger’s life and Freddie’s passion and his own creativity. They blend in something more magical.

Perhaps as magical as seeing a star born or die. Star deaths are easier to capture. Brian tries not to think of heat-deaths and the violence at home. Tries to not consider the endless abyss of death that he is currently circulating.

Brian doesn’t know where he is at. These stars are the same as the one he has studied. He knows their names, knows what they are. Their primary elements. But he cannot use that information. These stars are not his stars.

Most often he warms himself in the endless cold thinking of the Christmas they were snowed in. Roger had burned the hot chocolate and Freddie hadn’t cooked the roast the entire way through. The furnace had been unfixable because John’s tools were in his trunk. Brian had only worn a light jumper and fuzzy socks.

They cuddled together under the blankets watching old Christmas movies. That night Brian had called them his brothers (not Roger, but Roger was something more. More indescribable than the planet’s unknown colors). John and Freddie had returned the sentiment easily.

As easy as breathing.

Brian has forgotten what non-stored air tastes like.

He knows that he will run out soon. How he hasn’t only proves that time is lost to him.

The inside of his shelter reminds him of those last few days on Earth. He remembers walking around an empty flat. They knew this mission meant too much to him, but they hated that he left them. Would leave them.

Foolishly he had assured them in math equations and statistics.

He hadn’t promised that he would come back, just promised that it was _likely_ nothing would happen to him. What did they do when they heard the news? It took him six months to gather enough parts to build their communication array.

It took them eight to respond from there.

They must have moved on by now. He must be a fond thought or a sad thought to them whenever they look up at the night sky.

When Brian closes his eyes, he hears softly in the silence of space _Welcome home._

He never understood why people called space dead. The universe had so much energy – so much to give. Now he sees the folly of assuming that for that Space is alive, kinetic. Full of friction and heat and force and every other sort of equation that he learned in his physics lectures that indicated alive.

Space is dead. It is so empty and large, and each heartbeat is millions of miles away from the ones he wants to be with. If perhaps he could feel contact again. Energy cannot be created, and it is only a manner of time before the usable energy is used.

Roger kissing down his body, working him open slowly. Warm air on his stomach.

Brian misses that.

He misses the gentler touches too. Roger leaning against him or kissing his forehead. Even Freddie playing with his curls or John swatting at him when he makes a bad joke.

The computer starts up, unaware he had powered it up. It is his finger on the button. Someday, if he survives that long he will regret having wasted these ten minutes of power.

Brian doesn’t listen to their voices. It hurts too much to be met with Roger’s raspy lilt or Freddie’s melodic softness or John’s nasally murmur. He knows what they say anyway. More than that he knows what they don’t say. That on some level they do hate him because he left them and that they will always keep the light on and allow for him to come home.

If he can come home.

He has always thought that the saddest way to die was alone. It seems that he is burying himself in that same way.

Brian pauses it when they all try to force themselves into the frame of the camera. Roger will a watery smile and Freddie with a wide one but the corner of his eyes let know Brian its forced and John doesn’t even bother trying to hide how upset he is.

If he could throw the computer away, he would. There is no joyous image of the three of them together. Once, on their mantle there was. John’s birthday: Roger had cake smeared on his face and Freddie was hiding the icing covered one while John laughed with crumbs around his lips.

Brian had been behind the camera, and for once he wishes that he had been in front of it more. They may not remember how he looks save for the videos which are a gross distortion of his features, with only the flashlight lighting him.

_Welcome home,_ say the stars.

Once he thought that he was fit to live among the stars. They enchanted him greater than any fae song Freddie hums.

_Come back,_ says his heart.

In a moment he would. If he could fix what damage had been done to his ship. If he wasn’t millions of light-years away and could make it back to them before their bones crumbled to dust. Brian wishes for that more than he wished to be among the stars.

He mourns himself. No one else shall, not anymore, the mourned him when they heard that there was no way for him to be recovered. Brian prays that one day that can bring something back of him to lay in the ground next to his family. Connect him back to the Earth.

Brian May had wanted to live among the stars but now he wants to die among the tree roots.

* * *

When they find him, Brian rattles off the chances of it. Nearly the same as the two asteroids colliding. Lightning does strike twice, and Brian could not be more grateful.

It feels strange. To be weighed down but not tied down. Brian mumbles incoherently about songs and planets and stars. They tell him that his eyesight is damaged from viewing the stars with too little protection.

Brian tells them he never thought it would be an issue. He has forgotten what it is to truly need to see things.

His first sight is a hospital bed. Once his eyes adjust to having light constantly. He can see that those astronauts who found him, who had their own mission aborted when they found him, were not lying. Brian wonders if them finding him has taken away their love for stars.

Brian wants to be among them again. He loves them fiercely.

He sits through the examination and receives his ailments. All things he expected, but truthfully, they’re surprised at how well he held up _three_ years alone. On a comet. With no support.

There wasn’t much else for him to do _but_ survive. It was all he could do. Laying down and dying seemed like such a waste. It was a silent rebellion against the universe. One he is grateful for completing.

It takes him six months of being Earthside for him to ask after Roger or Freddie or John. Those doctors stare at him. Brian knows it’s an insane wish for them to care that he is back on Earth and for all intents healthy.

Brian keeps quiet that he thinks he found a wormhole, or many, and then found one that brought him back home. It’s the only way he can explain not starving to death or dying of exposure. He doesn’t want to say it was a blessing of the universe. That feels impossible.

Even stretching his rations gave him almost two years. He hadn’t had much to lose. So Brian knows something had kept him a life. A moment of the universe’s kindness among the death of space. Perhaps it didn’t want to see him die alone either.

Someone should always know.

“We’ll make some calls, Mr. May.”

Brian smiles and it feels odd to mean it. Now that it isn’t a reaction to the emotion he once felt.

Three days later he wakes up to yelling in the hallway. Brian stands on shaking legs – he knows that voice – gravity feels so weird. He shuffles slowly towards the door; he watches his step despite knowing that the ground is smooth tile. There won’t be a sudden drop-off. Brian hears a second voice – he knows that one too.

When he steps into the hallway the sound cuts off. For one paralyzing moment Brian thinks that he is back in space, where there is no sound no matter how loudly he screams. It would penetrate the helmet of course but nothing further. The walls of his house even, but it would be blown away with the winds of the comet.

Yet when he looks up it is not snow peaks that he sees but the three people he has missed the most in the universe. He can say that because he had been a universe away, he swears it. Roger’s hair is shorter, lighter. John’s hair is shorter too, tamer and more like the respectable person he wants to be. Freddie’s is the shortest, it surprises Brian because he remembers Freddie’s rudely funny remarks toward a man who wore that style.

Brian sees the differences in age and stress on them too. He cannot imagine what he looks like to them. His curls are still heavily damaged, and he must be paler and thinner than he had been before his journey into the abyss. Whatever he imagined saying to them flies out of his head.

They’re in front of him once more.

It is Roger that reacts the fastest. He rushes and jumps onto Brian. Unprepared he stumbles backward into the nurse’s station. Brian stares as Roger climbs closer to him but pulls away to look at Brian’s face. He doesn’t know what face to make.

Staring into Roger’s eyes is the first time that he realizes he is home.

Roger’s thumbs stroke underneath his eyes. His mouth is parted, Brian rests his hands on Roger’s ribs.

“It – I cannot I believe,” Roger whispers.

Brian nods. His throat feels like it's stuck together. He coughs once.

“Yeah,” he says.

Roger tries to press closer, “I want to kiss you.”

He nods again, “why haven’t you?”

“I don’t,” Roger clears his throat, “it’s been so long.”

“It has.”

“And I still love you.”

“But?”

“I just got used to living without you, and now you’re back…”

Brian understands. He thought about coming back and picking up his life where he left off. Impossible, he knows, he has so many health issues now that there isn’t a way _for_ him to pick up that same life. Roger had been a constant, a kiss and a shag and they’d be good.

It wouldn’t be fair to Roger to ignore what he has gone through.

Before he can answer he is knocked back again. This time by Freddie. Lips press against his cheek and knock his glasses askew. Freddie reaches up and straightens them.

“Makes you distinguished, dove.”

Brian smiles sheepishly, “hullo, Fred.”

Freddie steps back and grabs one of Brian’s hands and lifts it to his lips. Brian is surprised at the easy affection. Roger is pressed against his side. He doesn’t want to comment on it, because he doesn’t want to lose his touch again so soon.

John comes forward then. He smiles faintly, the real one that reaches his eyes. All John does is that soft smile.

Brian doesn’t know what is going to happen, but he is relieved to know that he’ll have these three at his side.


End file.
